


Indestructible

by AnchoredTether



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Pain, Sad, Teen Wolf AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-24
Updated: 2014-10-29
Packaged: 2018-02-22 09:54:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2503613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnchoredTether/pseuds/AnchoredTether
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Those awful things are survivable because we are as indestructible as we believe ourselves to be."</p><p>After an accident that lands Stiles and Lydia in the hospital, Stiles starts to lose his mind when Lydia doesn’t wake up. [Based on a combination of the AUs posted by stydia-fanfiction and flyawa-y]</p><p>[read on tumblr: http://anchoredtether.tumblr.com/tagged/indestructible fic]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Awakening

It started with confusion.

A blinding blur of noise and lights, rushing past with numbing speed. Completely disoriented as the surface was breached in a deafening shatter of the threshold between life and death, Stiles opened his eyes with a sharp inhale to find himself weighed down upon a hospital bed, an oxygen mask obscuring his mouth and distorting the sound of the air rushing into his lungs. Everything was so bright, and the pain felt like a sharp gravity against his bones. 

"Stiles! Thank God…" 

It was his father, right there by his bedside, his eyes gleaming from nights kept awake in dreadful anxiety. Stiles turned his head to better look at him, but quickly winced as a knife stabbed into his mind.

"What-what happened…?"

The sheriff gently grabbed his son’s hand, but it still felt overly firm. Stiles felt like his fingers would break any moment as stars laughed in his peripherals. He was fairly certain the ground was spinning in a dance, and Stiles had a hard time concentrating on anything when he was amounting all his energy to endure the flashing lights and sickening weight of pain.

"You were in a car accident, son. You and Lydia."

Eyes widening slowly, Stiles pulled off the oxygen mask and stared at his dad with a gaping mouth. “ _No_ …oh no…is she alright?!” His crestfallen expression transformed into desperate agitation. “She  _has_  to be alright. Tell me she’s alright.”

The silence that stretched between them and the pitiful expression the sheriff wore were nerve wracking, and as Stiles suffered the trouble of breathing, he yelled, his voice cracking, “ _Tell me!_ " He squeezed his father’s hand so hard he thought his whole arm would fall off.

"She’s alive." His tone said there was more to it than simply that. Although Stiles relaxed slightly, his eyebrows creased in worry as he waited for the other shoe to drop. "…but she’s in a coma, Stiles. She hasn’t woken up yet…."

All he could do was breathe heavily, his chest heaving in a staggering labor. He slowly released his hold on his father’s hand and strapped the oxygen mask back on, closing his eyes as silent tears cascaded to the rhythm of his broken exhales. He just wanted to make sure the strawberry-blonde was alright, that she was breathing along with him, if only barely, but he wouldn’t get to see her. 

Not for a while.

 

 


	2. Alive

"Stiles, are you sure you’re ok?"

Scott was sitting in a chair next to Stiles’ hospital bed. He had only been awake for two hours and he was exhausted. They wouldn’t allow non-family members to visit him till Stiles asked for Melissa and had her sneak Scott into his room. Their time was limited.

"Being ok is relative…." Stiles sighed. He felt incredibly tired, and just having the oxygen mask off to talk to his best friend made his lungs sore. He wanted nothing more than to fall back asleep and rest his mind from worrying about a particular strawberry blonde patient. "I won’t be ok so long as Lydia doesn’t wake up…"

"I’m sure Lydia will wake up soon. She’s strong." Scott remarked. "You know her. She wouldn’t want to go down without a fight, so I’m sure she’s fighting as hard as she can right now."

"Yeah…I just wished I could see her…" Stiles mused sadly.

"She looks the same as you." Scott said. "She must have just hit her head harder than you."

"Well I don’t even know how I look. How do I look?"

Scott gaped his mouth at his friend as he stared at him for a moment, a hesitant noise escaping the back of his throat. “Uhhh….you look like hell, Stiles. I mean, you’ve got _staples_  in your head.”

Stiles narrowed his eyes in annoyance. “Not all of us have supernatural healing abilities,  _Scott_.”

"I know…but you still look awful. But I suppose Lydia doesn’t look as bad as when Peter bit her, so that’s good, right?"

Warm brown eyes wavering, Stiles looked down as he remembered the last time Lydia was in the hospital, and couldn’t help the feeling that he was the one responsible for her constantly winding up there. “I don’t know…Lydia keeps ending up in the hospital because of me.”

"Last time wasn’t your fault, Stiles."

"Yeah, but I was her date. I should have protected her." 

"There was nothing you could have done on that date to prevent Peter from hurting her, and I’m sure there’s nothing you could have done on this date to have saved her either."

“ _Date?_  We were on a  _date?_ ”

"Yeah, don’t you remember? You finally got the guts to ask her out."

"I did?" Stiles felt a warmth at the idea that he had asked Lydia out and she had said yes, but mostly he felt a banging confusion in his head. "Are you sure, we were on a _date?_  And _I_  asked her out? And she said  _yes? That actually happened?_ ”

Scott laughed softly. “Yes Stiles. It did. It really did.” His dark eyes softened. “I’m sorry you can’t remember. Apparently car crashes do that to peoples’ memories.”

"Do you know what happened? I didn’t crash my Jeep did I?"

Scott was hesitant, his lips pursing into a thin line. “It was a T-bone in an intersection. Someone ran a red light and hit you guys…”

"My Jeep, Scott. Tell me my Jeep is fine."

"It’s  _totaled_.” Scott made a wincing expression as he sank into his shoulders. “I’m sorry.”

Stiles threw his head back and let out an anguished sigh. “Whyyyyyy!”

"But you and Lydia are alive, so that’s…good." Scott threw in to try and lighten the mood.

"Lydia’s alive but not  _living_ , Scott.” He said softly as he returned his attention to his friend. “I won’t rest until her eyes open.” He winced in pain, rubbing a hand against his forehead, but then noticed the needle sticking out of his arm that slithered into the IV. “Oh god they got a needle in me…” 

Stiles passed out before Scott could do anything.

 

 


	3. Not Like This

The next few days were agony.

Stiles tried reading books he remembered Lydia reading, but it wasn’t a worthy distraction. He played chess with his dad whenever he visited (which was far too often), and Scott tried to distract him with pleasant conversation whenever his mom let him sneak in, but Stiles couldn’t stop thinking about her. Stiles asked Scott to tell him how Lydia looked since he couldn’t leave his bed, and every day it was the same response.

"She looks like she’s resting peacefully."

Stiles hoped it was peaceful for the strawberry blonde. He had no idea what a coma was like, but from what he had seen, people usually came out of them in worse shape than they were previously. 

All Stiles suffered was a bad concussion and cracked ribs, several huge bruises, and a few stitches from lacerations caused by shards of glass that embedded into his flesh from the collision. Melissa told him that Lydia had a contusion and a fractured skull, and several bruises. From what was gathered at the scene, his dad told him that the car slammed into Stiles’ jeep from Lydia’s side, colliding with a streetlight post on Stiles’ side. Stiles received the worse end on physical damage, but Lydia received the harder blow to the head, and in the end that was the worst card to be dealt.  

Some days he woke up in a frantic sweat, his heart pounding so hard in his chest he thought the monitor would explode before his organ ever did. His words would spill out in fervent worry about Lydia, asking whether she was alive, whether she would live, whether she would ever wake up, grabbing at the doctors with a pleading in the depths of his broken eyes, and Stiles eventually collapsed under the weight of hopelessness and drowned in his tears. 

He told himself he’d wake up from this nightmare eventually, that the darkness from the surrogate sacrifice was playing tricks with his mind, that Lydia  _couldn’t be dying_ , that she would never die so long as he continued to breathe.

"Scott…" Stiles muttered in the middle of one his breakdowns to his patiently waiting friend, "She can’t die. She can’t. This already happened once, and I couldn’t have peace so long as she was filled with turmoil. But…there’s nothing I can do…I’m powerless to help her, to save her…I was powerless to protect her, and now I can’t even pull her out of the hell I thrust her down into." He closed his eyes, tears falling down the sides of his face like elegant diamonds. "I can’t do anything, and Lydia’s going to die because of me."

"Stiles, it wasn’t your fault." Scott reassured, placing a hand on his friend’s wrist, his veins running dark as he pulled away a fraction of the storm of his suffering. "It was a freak accident. You couldn’t have predicted the collision any more than you could have stopped Peter from hurting Lydia the first time. You need to understand that. None of this is your fault."

"Then why am I  _alive?_ " Stiles asked with a hurt in his eyes, his lips quivering. "Why am I the one awake and perfectly fine, while she’s in a sleep of death? Why Scott!  _Why am I always the one that survives!_  I never asked to be the survivor! I’m always the one to escape death and  _I hate it!!_  First with my mom, then the mechanic, then Heather, and now…I can’t have Lydia join that list….I can’t…” 

Stiles was tried of yelling and could barely breathe from the tears as they threatened to drown him in sorrow. He shut his eyes tight and frowned, letting the pain flow from his eyes and from his veins as Scott absorbed some of the weight.

"Stiles…" Scott didn’t know what to say, so he took his friend’s hand and held it with both of his, absorbing as much hurt as he could since the words of comfort wouldn’t grace his lips. 

"Do you know what it’s like, Scott?" Stiles asked with a trembling voice after a long stretch of silent crying. "To have everyone die around you?"

"No…I don’t…" Scott looked up at Stiles with a sad empathy in his gaze. "But I know someone who does."

"Who?" Stiles asked pathetically as he stared up at the ceiling.

"Lydia."

Turning his head to look at Scott with bloodshot eyes, a few drops falling from his lashes, Stiles cast his eyes down to Scott’s hands absorbing his pain. “I don’t even know if she screamed. If she knew what was coming. If a banshee would be graced with the ability to scream the prediction of her own death…”

Scott smiled weakly. “She’s not dead though, Stiles. She’s still breathing. Her heart’s still pumping blood. I’ve been sneaking into her room and taking as much of her pain as I can. Lydia’s strong, Stiles. You know that more than anyone. She’ll pull through this, just give her time.”

"How much time?" Stiles asked softly, his eyes wavering as he stared into Scott’s concerned gaze.

"However much time it takes. It might be a week, it might be a year. I can only take away so much pain, but each day it’s a little more, it’s a few more steps towards a full recovery. I won’t stop helping her heal."

Stiles smiled painfully. “And I won’t stop waiting for her.”

 

 


End file.
